"Had MC Escher made music instead of drawing impossible and perplexing perspectives, it would sound like Sonar" is how writer Sid Smith once assessed the Swiss-based band’s work. It remains an apt description for the outfit’s method of creating hypnotic pieces by gradually building intricate patterns of picked notes, plucked harmonics, mesmeric bass, and insistent rhythms. The music created by Stephan Thelen (tritone guitar), Bernard Wagner (tritone guitar), Christian Kuntner (tritone bass), Manuel Pasquinelli (drums, percussion) harnesses elements of rock, jazz and contemporary classical minimalism and fuses them to create a distinctive musical language…

Atomhendge, the home of Hawkwind’s catalogue from 1976 1997, continue their series of definitive reissued editions of these classic albums with the Limited 3CD Deluxe Edition release of Levitation. Recorded in 1980 and featuring Ginger Baker, the album was a classic work and spawned an equally legendary tour. Although Baker’s tenure with Hawkwind was brief, a concert at Lewisham Odeon in December 1980 was recorded by a mobile unit. Now remixed from the original multitrack masters this deluxe edition includes the entire concert (during which Sci-Fi author Michael Moorcock guested).

In its time, Bohemia was to Czechoslovakia what UK was to the international prog scene - a supergroup formed by the cream of the crop Czech prog and fusion musicians. These included keyboardist Lesek Semelka (ex-Blue Effect), saxophonist Jan Kubik (ex-Flamengo), bassist Vladimir Kulhanek (ex-Flamengo) drummer Pavel Trnavsky (Jazz Q) and the 20 year old guitar prodigy Michal Pavlicek (ex-Expanze, later Prazsky Vyber & Stromboli). They grouped together in 1975. The leading figures in the band and the two main writers were Semelka and Kubik…

Remakes can be atrocious wastes of wax: subpar carbon copy re-treads dressed up as calculated idolatry, or deconstructionist reconfigurations basking in the laziness of lyrics already written. However, two of the greatest rewrites in history belong to Manfred Mann's Earth Band. The treatments of Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded By the Light" and "For You" included here create a wholly unique variation on the stark, earthy originals by flipping the tracks and exposing the soft, white underbelly, then piling on excessive musical ornamentation like a master filmmaker visualizing a novel, blowing the inspiration at the nucleus into a bowdlerized paronomasia of sonic perfection.

The final instalment of Judy’s entrancing trilogy of albums for Talking Elephant is a perfect continuation of the second (Spindle), notably in the consistency of both its poetic lyrical invention and its adopted sound-world. It brings eight more new songs to the table, resplendent in beautiful aural clothing that’s smooth but edgy, refined but somehow quite primeval. The dominant timbre is, as before, intelligent prog-ambient keyboard texturings, which are all down to the wizardry of Judy’s chief collaborator Mark Swordfish (of Astralasia); however, such is the excellence of the recording that neither is Judy’s vocal ever in danger of being drowned in a sea of synths nor are the key instrumental lines or "voices" held anywhere but in exemplary balance.

Tangerine Dream - Nebulous Dawn - The Early Years (2006) {3CD Set, Sanctuary Records CMETD1366}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.02 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 496 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 69 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2006 Sanctuary Records / Castle Music | CMETD1366
Electronic / Avant-Garde / Abstract / Art Rock / Experimental Electronic / Prog-Rock

Simply put, this box set is a reissue of Tangerine Dream's first four albums. Nebulous Dawn: The Early Years includes Electronic Meditation (Ohr, 1970); Alpha Centauri (Ohr, 1971); the double-disc Zeit (Ohr, 1972), and Atem (Ohr, 1973). Also enclosed in the three-disc package are the A- and B-sides of the single "Ultima Thule" (in two parts), released in February of 1972, and lastly, the very beginning of Edgar Froese's first band the Ones.

Over a year in the making, drumming legend Virgil Donati's much anticipated solo record "In This Life" is destined to set the bar for explorations in rhythm. The album was produced, written and arranged by Donati, and mixed by Alex Argento. Virgil s drumming has arguably been at the leading edge for at least a decade, and as this record displays, his compositional and orchestration skills are also coming to the fore.

After a scission of the avant-garde group "Kluster" due to the departure of Conrad Schnitzler, the two musicians Dieter Moebius and Hans Joachim Roedelius go to work in duet as "Cluster". The band's first years were clearly orientated to Krautrock and to experimental electronic music. Consequently, the production of the band started with massive, radical improvisations, constructed around electric organ works, electronic collages, guitar sound manipulations, feed back. The result is rather similar to Kluster's underground, conceptual music, very chaotic with lot of distortion and reverb. With its repetitive, hypnotic guitar patterns and embryonic electronic collages, the second album "II" can be seen as a classic in 70's German electronic underground…

Soma Planet is a Progressive rock band born in the mid-Nineties, in Barcelona, Catalunya. At first very influenced by bands such as King Crimson (Seventies and Eighties), Gong, Can or Embryo, the musicians quickly achieved a personal style. All their efforts and time were dedicated in finding formulas to play music that permitted at the same time breaking with traditional harmonies and structures, following improvisational patterns built slowly in time, starting in understanding music as a game. "Bholenath" is the second opus of the band, released in 2007 by the Musea label. There's everything you can imagine in it, as far as Seventies are concerned (Except for keyboards): versatile drumming, roaming bass, a mix of acoustic and electric sequences, vocal (A little) and instrumental (A lot) tracks…

One of Hawkwind's stronger 1980s releases, their last U.K. Top 30 hit, and certainly the high point of their two-year/three-album stint with RCA, Choose Your Masques boasts a vision and energy that neither of its predecessors could match, coupled with some excellent songwriting and - again, unlike its predecessors - more than a couple of songs that demanded revisiting. Part of the improvement was surely down to the return of saxophonist Nik Turner, absent since 1978…

It's not billed that way but given the Who's productivity since their initial split in 1982, it's difficult not to view 2019's Who as the band's final album. It's only their second album in 37 years, and if it takes them another 13 years to complete a third – that's the length of time separating Who from 2006's Endless Wire – both Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey will be well into their eighties, a seemingly unlikely age for new work by rockers. Then again, the Who have long outlived Townshend's youthful desire to die before he gets old, a fact he began to contend with during the mid-'70s, when he chronicled his middle-aged disappointment on Who by Numbers. Who doesn't sound much like Who by Numbers.

Zartong were a quartet of Armenian musicians who moved to France and released a self-titled debut album before promptly vanishing in the late 70's, and a fascinating and unpredictable prog curio it turned out to be! A mostly instrumental work that jumps in all sorts of directions, prominent spacey synth-driven symphonic prog moments suddenly give way to plentiful folk interludes and Turkish flavoured diversions, electronic ambience, Zeuhl weirdness, jazz-fusion fire and poppier vocal breaks (not to mention some dreaded yet unsurprising light disco elements due to the era it arrived in!). The album has a distinctive and very unique sound due to two of the musicians playing a santour (an Iranian instrument similar to a zither) and a kamancha, a type of oriental violin.

Kosmodysseia is the new album by Finnish heavy progressive/psych rock band The Fërtility Cült. This Tampere-based band has progressed and grown a lot in a few years and now seem to be annual performers at Fruits de Mer Records's Crabstock Festival in Wales. In addition to the standard rock instrumentation and great vocals their sound is heavily saturated with Hammond organ, Rhodes piano and saxophones making them sound rather special at least in Finland at the moment. There's also some cello and violin on the album. The new album seems less doom metal and more progressive rock which is definitely a good thing this time but there are still some heavy, gloomy parts in there.